Servants: A Downstairs View of Twentieth-century Britain - Softcover

Lucy Lethbridge

Softcover

ISBN 10: 140884270X ISBN 13: 9781408842706

Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2013

Synopsis

From the quintessential liveried servant of 1900 and the 10,000 'maids-of-all-work' invited to tea by Queen Alexandra to celebrate the King's coronation in 1902, to modern au pairs and domestics, this authoritative social history gathers the 'voices, heard and unheard, published and unpublished, of domestic servants' to offer an engrossing account of the social changes that have taken place in the British home over the last century.

About this title

About the Author:

Lucy Lethbridge is the author of the highly praised Servants: A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times. She lives in London.

Review:

“Absorbing history, much of it in the words of servants...[Lethbridge’s] subject is many-branched and full of pressing issues.”
- Economist

“Thorough and vastly entertaining...[Lethbridge’s] style is elegant, detached and slyly witty...Richly complex and enjoyable.”
- Sue Gaisford, Financial Times

“Beautifully written, sparkling with insight, and a pleasure to read, Servants is social history at its most humane and perceptive.”
- Paul Addison, Times Literary Supplement

“In this excellent addition to the history of domestic service in the 20th century, Lucy Lethbridge has swept the existing archive and added new sources of her own. The result is a richly textured account of what it felt like to spend the decades of high modernity on your knees with a dustpan and brush.”
- Guardian (UK)

“As a panorama, Servants is a great success. Enthusiasts of bonnets and waistcoasts will find Upstairs Downstairs or Downton Abbey all the more enjoyable after reading this nuanced and elegantly written account of the wider context. And in tracing the history of servants throughout the whole of the 20th century, Lethbridge offers a new vantage point from which to reassess British social history.”
- Observer (UK)

“Move over Downton Abbey, Lucy Lethbridge portrays life below stairs as it really was. Absorbing, highly entertaining, and impeccably researched, Servants is so much fun to read that it’s practically a guilty pleasure.”
- Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana and A World on Fire

“Lucy Lethbridge turns servants into stars, offering a colorful and compelling social history about the men, women, and children whose occupation rendered them invisible. Buoyed by substantial research, engaging anecdotes, and a lively narrative, the book places generations of overlooked domestics center stage, where, finally, they receive the attention they have always deserved.”
- Deborah Davis, author of Strapless and Gilded

“The panoramic view of the subject and Lethbridge’s engaging style and sharp observations make this book a valuable addition.”
- Kathleen McCallister, Library Journal

“A lively and complicating account of British social history seen through the eyes of the workers who made it possible.”
- Andrea DenHoed, The New Yorker

“Vivid .... Household service provides Lethbridge with a window into almost every corner of social history.”
- New York Times Book Review

“Lethbridge writes with sympathy about her subject.... Evenhanded to the end, [she] stresses the inherent dignity of domestic service.”
- Matthew Price, Newsday

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 140884270X
• ISBN 13: 9781408842706
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 385